Continue reading »]]> So Packeteer and BlueCoat (BCSI) have done the deed, and Packeteer is now “A BlueCoat Company”.

Quick take-aways so far indicate the planned killing off of a significant portion of the Packeteer product line, and the maintenance of the current Packetshaper product line (Packetshaper, Intelligence Centre and PolicyCentre).

Blue Coat ProxySG is and will remain our strategic product offering for WAN Optimization. We will continue selling PacketShaper, IntelligenceCenter and PolicyCenter and invest heavily in development to revitalize the PacketShaper technologies and feature sets and integrate those into the Blue Coat ProxySG product line.

• Blue Coat PacketShaper
• Blue Coat IntelligenceCenter
• Blue Coat PolicyCenter

Packeteer’s iShared, iShaper, SkyX and Mobiliti products will remain available for sale to existing customers. However, we are not recommending or proposing that new customers purchase these products. We are currently assessing plans for these products and will soon announce decisions as to their future status. – Source

So if you’ve deployed any of the recent (or not so recent) Packeteer acquisitions, then you’re likely to be able to purchase current stock, and then you’re on your own.

In addition it looks like Packetshaper will be maintained (for some indeterminate timeframe), but then you still have the issue that Packeteer had with the iShared/Packetshaper combination.. two boxes to solve a set of problems, when everyone else has a single box solution.

Continue reading »]]> So there’s loads of stuff on the net about the upcoming merger between BlueCoat and Packeteer. I’m going to add my own 2p to the thoughts, as I think that this is a potentially large issue for users of Packetshaper, iShared and SkyX devices.

Some of the other comment on this merger is available at the pages are shown below:

• Blue Coat pockets Packeteer for $268m | The Register
• Blue Coat vows to fund the heck out of PacketShaper | The Register
• Packeteer > News > Press Releases
• Blue Coat Announces Private Placement of $80 Million in Convertible Notes to Partially Fund the Acquisition of Packeteer | Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

So apart from the credit crunch meaning that BlueCoat has to go to Packeteers shareholders to fund the aquisition based on future value of the BlueCoat stock, there’s some other other things that should make current Packeteer users worry.

A previous BlueCoat aquisition was the NetCache arm of NetApp, which was being sold off in June 2006. At the time NetCache was lagging in features behind the BlueCoat ProxySG devices, and the aquisition was basically for the customer base. Shortly after the NetCache line was declared end-of-life, and the migration of the NetCache user base to ProxySG was started. This is still continuing, with many NetCache customers still not moving over, but contining to run on the old platform as they are comfortable with it, and then re-evaluating when the devices are out of maintenance.